Scholarly Entry #K11-482-Rt3:

  The Curious Metabolism of Gremlins

  In times of duress—or simply when a nap is deemed inconvenient, irrelevant, or inaccessible—Gremlins have been known to substitute sleep with an alarming increase in caloric intake. Anything with sugar, caffeine, or a suspicious fizz will do.

  This, while briefly effective, is rarely recommended unless one enjoys the company of manic, twitching creatures speaking fluent gibberish and attempting to dismantle the furniture to see how it ticks.

  The effects of this cunning workaround are well documented and include (but are not limited to): erratic behavior, incoherent soliloquies, sudden sprints to nowhere in particular, an irresistible urge to poke, prod, or lick things that very clearly should not be poked, prodded, or licked, auditory hallucinations usually involving small argumentative rodents, and—eventually—a sugar crash of such biblical proportions that it often ends with the gremlin unconscious, mid-sentence, face-first in a bowl of something that was probably food.

  All of which would be a mere inconvenience—an afternoon's entertainment, really—if not for one small, critical detail: this chaotic state of semi-conscious sugar-fuelled mania is nothing, nothing compared to what happens if said gremlin falls asleep on a caloric deficit.

  Should one of these creatures emerge from its cocoon of vaguely warm electronics to discover its caloric reserves fully depleted, the resulting mood is not so much “hangry” as it is “a localized natural disaster with opinions.” Think earthquake, but with more screeching and a fondness for biting.

  The scientific term for this is *Don't Be There When It Happens.*

  ***

  Annabell awoke with the distinct impression that she had personally offended seven years’ worth of bad luck, and they’d all decided to sit on her chest for a bit of revenge. Some might have blamed the bruises. Others, the rather artistic angle at which she'd slept—twisted like a badly-folded deckchair. A few pessimists might even have blamed the general ambience of a damp, existentially confused basement.

  But Annabell knew the real reason she felt like a cursed turnip: She was hungry. Not “missed breakfast” hungry. No, this was the kind of hunger usually experienced by explorers stranded on uncharted islands, or cats who haven’t been fed in two whole hours. Actually, make that four hours.

  “Wallace, code 11-14! Requesting emergency rations—immediate dispatch!” she declared, scrabbling dramatically at the pocket of her hoodie. She groped inside and found only damp lint and betrayal.

  “Code 19-19!” she gasped dramatically. “I repeat, code 19-19! We’re out of snacks! Prepare the obituary!”

  A voice, stifled by gloom and possibly trauma, floated up from behind her. “...What the hell are you doing?”

  Annabell spun around to find Mister-Mister there, hunched in a corner, clinging to his head like it was about to float away.

  “What are you doing?” she cleverly retorted. “Trying to keep the last screws from coming loose?”

  Snickering, she went for a triumphant high-five with Wallace but was interrupted by a stomach grumble that could only be described as “existentially alarming.”

  “Hunger... too strong,” she groaned, doubling over, hands clutching her belly as though she could physically restrain it from declaring open rebellion. “Not enough energy... for... snarky retorts…”

  As she lay there, suffering in unimaginable agony, he sighed.

  She was dying, and he had the audacity to sigh.

  “Really, who are you?” Mister-Mister asked. “And more importantly: what, exactly, are you made of?”

  “I’m a living, loveable being with the basic requirements of such,” Annabell groaned from the floor, forehead pressed to the cold stone with all the dignity of a wilting fern. “Those requirements being: to eat, to sleep, and to laze about. In that exact order. Possibly with snacks in between. Please, I—”

  Her sentence broke off as her nose twitched, her pupils dilated, and her brain—long denied proper sustenance—momentarily evolved echolocation based entirely on processed sugar vapours.

  In a flash of synapses and desperation, her head shot up like a prairie dog that had just heard the lunch bell of doom.

  “What’s that?” she demanded, voice steely with purpose, eyes locking on a crumpled wrapper with the precision of a heat-seeking ferret.

  Lionel blinked, glancing down at the forlorn object beside him. “This?” He reached for it in that innocent, doomed way people do just before badgers bite. “It’s—”

  There are pouncing predators, cracks of thunder, and the very speed of light. Annabell was faster still.

  She launched herself across the floor like a scalded mongoose on roller skates, snagging the wrapper mid-pounce and slamming into the wall with all the grace of a sack of doorknobs. It didn’t matter.

  “Nutritional value: unnecessarily high,” she muttered, sniffing her prize like a truffle pig in a chocolate factory. “Caloric density: sublime. Viable as emergency rations: absolutely.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  She tossed the empty wrapper aside with dramatic finality and spun toward Lionel, hands outstretched, palms upturned, eyes wide in that particular expression only seen on alley cats and small children who’ve just seen someone unwrap a sweet.

  “Give me a fresh one,” she demanded.

  Lionel blinked again, eyebrow raising.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Food. Gimme.”

  She jabbed a finger vaguely in the direction of his jacket, as if asserting eminent domain. All consumables within a ten-foot radius were, by unwritten Gremlin law, hers. Fifteen feet if she was actively starving, which she was.

  Technically, anything edible not nailed down—and some things that were—belonged to the Gremlin during a Code Yellow Alert. And this was at least Code Yellow Plus With Sprinkles.

  “And whyever should I do that?” Lionel slowly asked, in the maddeningly reasonable tone of someone actively, and quite cautiously, assessing the situation.

  Annabell’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Because I’ll cry if you don’t,” she whispered, the words soft and cold like fog creeping under a door. “I’ll cry and I’ll throw a fit. A proper one.”

  Lionel snorted. “What are you, a child?”

  “Maybe I am,” she snapped back, hands still outstretched, palms up. “A starving, emotionally unstable, extremely sharp-toothed child. So feed me!”

  He gave a low hum, the sort of sound you’d expect from a villain in an opera, or older siblings when they’ve realized what the less fortunate want.

  From within his jacket, he produced another wrapper—this one whole, uncrumpled, untouched by Gremlin fingers. He dangled it just out of reach, like a man toying with the concept of hubris.

  “Hmm, should I, shouldn’t I~” he teased, because some men are born with death wishes, and others issue formal invitations. Then again, to his defense, there was no way for him to know what he was dealing with. “Maybe if you—”

  Less than one minute after refusing to provide sustenance to the Gremlin, Lionel J’khall was viciously attacked.

  Witnesses (none), evidence (everywhere), and the final report (compiled by Wallace, highly unbiased plushie) all agreed: he had brought it on himself.

  You simply do not dangle snacks in front of a Gremlin unless you are prepared to lose something—dignity, fingers, or your last bite of compressed caramel-nut bar.

  Lionel nearly lost all three.

  ***

  “Any news?”

  Desmond wasn’t even halfway down the stairs as Mari’s voice rose into the stillness. The usual clatter and ticking gear work had vanished underneath the rain’s quiet pitter-patter, leaving behind an eerie quiet that made even dust motes nervous.

  The Clatterwane, for once, was silent.

  The boy shook his head. “Still won’t let me inside,” he said, fingers clenched around the bannister, eyes glazed and sheepishly staring into a distance that wasn’t there.

  It had been a long night, and it still wasn’t over.

  “Was...” he paused, “was it a mistake, leaving her with that man?”

  Mari flinched.

  She hadn’t expected to hear her own thoughts spoken out loud.

  “No, we—”

  “All of this was a fucking mistake,” Alana cut in, her bitter tone slicing through the assurance like a guillotine. “Coming here. Staying here. Breathing the air. Even existing within a twenty-mile radius of this gods-forsaken place was a mistake.”

  The other two exchanged a glance.

  Ever since they’d fished the woman out of the sea—alive, sodden, and significantly quieter than she had been before—she’d spoken only in monosyllables and the occasional glare. Just enough to let them know she was fine, mostly.

  Technically breathing. Spiritually off on holiday.

  She’d lost her sister, nearly joined her, and she’d also been the last person to see Alek or Gami alive. She’d come within a hair’s breadth of joining them, and possibly would have, had the sea not gotten distracted in the last possible moment.

  Her silence had been the grim, heavy kind that sits in the corner sharpening its knives and waiting for someone to drop a teacup. And the others, caught in the centrifugal panic of survival and saving Yenna, had let her have it.

  Now, however, the woman’s eyes carried a dangerous gleam.

  “Don’t you agree?” Alana continued. “We’re going to die if we stay here. We need to get away. Now.”

  “But… what about Yenna?” Mari asked.

  Alana’s face twitched. The dam burst.

  “Why the fuck should we care about her?” she snapped, the words spilling out like a poorly secured drawer of knives. “She didn’t give a damn about leaving my sister behind, did she? So why should we care about her? That selfish, greedy, skill-hoarding little bitch has been padding her résumé while the rest of us were trying not to die. Look at this place!

  “The rest of us were barely clinging on with broken fingernails, and she was out here collecting skills like they’re bloody stamps. She’s got herself an apprenticeship! She’s grinding! Grinding! As if this cursed excuse for a town is some sort of game and not a meat grinder for the damned!”

  She paused only to breathe. Or possibly reload.

  “If she hadn’t been such a self-absorbed asshole, we might’ve all made it out. Alive. But no. She had her eyes on a prize no one else even wanted. So, screw her. Screw all of them. If you’re not looking out for yourself, then no one else bloody well will.”

  Mari opened and closed her mouth.

  Desmond, meanwhile, had the expression of someone still trying to catch the plot after stepping into the theatre halfway through Act III. His jaw dangled slightly open, as though his brain had left it ajar on its way out.

  “So,” said Alana, in the tone of someone who had already made a decision, “are the two of you coming with me or not?”

  In her hand, she flicked her last remaining argument: a seven-inch knife. It wasn’t particularly fancy. It wasn’t glowing or enchanted or whispering the names of the lives it’d claimed. But it was sharp, and very much real, and she spun it like she was daring the world to suggest otherwise.

  Mari cast a look at Desmond, who offered all the communicative clarity of a decorative gourd.

  “But…” the girl hesitantly began, “Where would we even go? The ship is gone, and… well, the mist…”

  The rest of her sentence didn’t need to be said. It already had been, repeatedly, during those long, grim afternoons of strategizing ways out of Ashenmoor. Every plan that hadn’t involve the sea died the same way: with the mist.

  Nobody had volunteered to check out that route.

  The mist wasn’t just the sort that obscured your vision, it poked around in your thoughts if you lingered for too long, repeating them in the voices of your dead relatives, former schoolteachers, or, worst of all, your own inner critic.

  “Isn’t this stupid System supposed to guide us through Dungeons?” Alana scoffed, twirling her knife restlessly. “If we just get moving, won’t it—”

  She didn’t finish.

  Because right then, thunder struck above their heads. Or at least something of similar magnitude, causing the entirety of the Clatterwane to rumble.

  The tremor slid down through the walls, out into the rain-sodden, sulking streets of Ashenmoor, and kept going. Whatever it was, it had weight.

  “What… was that?” Desmond said, eyes fixed on the ceiling as though it owed him an explanation.

  Mari, still staring at the middle distance like it had personally insulted her, said quietly—too quietly for the others to hear—“It was the System acknowledging a request.”

  Her stomach had folded itself into a neat, painful origami swan. The same kind that had ushered them from their peaceful inn last night, straight into the clutches of the Silting.

  The other two might not have heard it, felt it. But she had.

  Perception Check: Passed

  Whatever is happening upstairs, it is not subtle. Ashenmoor—sullen, haunted, and still reeling from last night—is beginning to take notice. Expect company…

  The scenario was progressing.